Having a good yarn trumps noisy band at Breadalbane Bush Bash

Volunteers in the little village of Breadalbane west of Goulburn have decided that you don’t need a band for a bush bash.

After a four-year break the Breadalbane Hall committee is resuming its annual bush bash fundraiser. Committee members will serve a three-course meal, auction a load of wood, a horse rug and paintings and allow conversations to dominate the remainder of the evening.

They have dispensed with a band for good reason according to one of the organisers, Chrissie McLean.

“The last few years we did have a band, no-one wanted to dance, they wanted to chat,” she said.

“People haven’t seen each other for so long, they don’t want to get up and dance and country people, especially the blokes, don’t really want to dance anyway,” she said.

Sound bounced off the glass windows and concrete floor at the best of times, making conversations difficult. One of the volunteers who is now deceased, Stephen Friend, decided to tackle the problem.

“He couldn’t go to a function and hear anybody, because his hearing was bad,” Chrissie said. “That happened to a lot of the farmers around here. So he said he would take it upon himself to fix the problem. Now we have really good acoustics in the hall, even if we do have 60 to 80 people in there. You can actually hear one another.”

The hall opened in 2010.

“We have lost a lot in Breadalbane and gained the hall, the biggest boon in our whole community, really,” said Chrissie, a farmer’s wife who moved to the district in 1976 when she married James McLean.

In those days Breadalbane was a busy stopover on the Hume Highway until the bypass in 1994 saw businesses close and people leave.

“They pulled the railway station down, the pub went out of vogue,” Chrissie said. “They used to have a hall in Breadalbane years and years ago. I think they pulled it down; it was next to the pub in the early 1970s.”

The bush bash was becoming a much anticipated annual fundraiser until it stopped during the COVID pandemic and was not resumed until this year.

“Everyone in the community wanted to have it,” Chrissie said. “It was a time once a year when we all got together, flung ourselves around a bit, and actually met up and chatted. The hall was such a bonus for that. We had nothing there before.”

Chrissie and another farmer’s wife, Vanessa Edwards, who have catered for two women’s health luncheons and dinners in the hall previously, are organising the catering for the bush bash. Other committee members will make soup and desserts.

Having left the farm – which the McLeans still own – and moved to Goulburn, Chrissie will be remembered as the owner, with her sister Louise Shiel, of Cope’s Kitchen shop in the then Argyle Mall which sold kitchenware and gifts.

These days much of her work is in the well-equipped commercial kitchen in the hall. It has underpinned numerous community events, including the women’s health lunch, 21st birthday parties, children’s birthday parties, annual visits from the vintage car club and Christmas parties.

The hall has become the heart of Breadalbane, which is attracting young people who are settling on blocks of land, raising families and supporting the local school.

“Next year they will get an influx of children because of all the new blocks – 10 or 11 new pupils who will double the size of the school. That’s pretty incredible,” Chrissie said.

“The hall has been fantastic in making those people feel welcome and they come along to these shows,” she said.

“I have been doing the bush bash numbers – a lot of people booking tickets are from the new blocks,” she said. “They have embraced it and a lot come from Sydney, Canberra, or wherever and say, ‘Oh, we have never been to anything where everyone is so welcoming.’”

Breadalbane Bush Bash will take place on 27 July from 6 pm. Tickets are $35 and bookings are essential. Contact 0407 266 736 by 22 July.